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Why bother with analytics for a hobby website?

This is the correct answer. There's precily nothing to gain from looking at the data from a small website.

analytics is important to grow an audience. A big website doesn't need to care about SEO or analytics or anything really. Metcalfe's law

You can still self-host a FOSS law compliant analytics suite. It will suffice for small websites.

If you don't want to pay it, then you probably don't need it.

I don't have experience with alternatives though - they just don't do as good of a job as Fathom does.